In this project, as I'm looking at the trends in gender and sexuality, one important aspect that I found was the influence of the culture of that time period on how or why women in particular were written or regarded in a certain way. Although the selection of primary texts is small for this project, looking at the vast gaps in time between these pieces of literature serves to emphasize not only the divide between them time wise but also how similar they still are even after a wide gap of time.

In the Victorian era men were held to the ideal of strength, finances, and the societal class system These ideals were then reinforced through literature, such as in the novels Jane Eyre and Fanny Fern. Victorian novels have often been perceived as grandeur romances; a beautiful English woman falling in love and marrying a rich handsome man. That portrayal of romance is actually a guise of toxic masculinity. Within it lies unbalanced gender roles.